Joe Orton thought a lot about good taste (and who got to decide what it was)

“The kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste invariably have very bad taste.”
– Joe Orton

The playwright Joe Orton said these words during an interview published in 1967, when he was both the toast of the London theatre world and a scandalous new player in the arts.

His plays — like Loot and Entertaining Mr. Sloane — were quick-witted and fired-up, and are still performed to this day.

The interview happened in Orton’s apartment, just a few months before he was murdered in it.

Orton’s killer was his lover, Kenneth Halliwell, who was evidently enraged by the diary that Orton had been keeping — not to mention being eclipsed by Orton’s fame. The older partner, Halliwell had assumed he would be the mentor.

Then Orton’s talents emerged, and with it his fame. In just a few years, Orton went from obscurity to theatrical awards to having the Beatles get in touch about writing a screenplay (for a madcap successor to A Hard Day’s Night and Help! that unfortunately was never made).

Years later, all of this came to light, through John Lahr’s biography, the publication of Orton’s diaries and the 1987 Stephen Frears film Prick Up Your Ears. Orton did not much disguise the fact that he was gay from the people he met, which was bold given that homosexuality was still against the law until the year he died. He also did not shy away from detailing his world in his diary.

The movie cast a young Gary Oldman as Orton, Alfred Molina as Halliwell, Wallace Shawn as Lahr as he researched the book, and Vanessa Redgrave as Orton’s literary agent, who knew the truth of the story would complement Orton’s legacy. The film — with a screenplay by Alan Bennett, of whom I wrote this post recently — is not bad (four stars from Roger Ebert) and well worth tracking down.

Orton’s plays continue to fascinate, and to draw crowds. Entertaining Mr. Sloane played just a few months ago at London’s Young Vic.

Meanwhile, I was intrigued about the quote and tracked it down to the journal Transatlantic Review.

It’s also useful to read the quote in full context, and to see Orton’s barbs fly.

GORDON : Which brings us straight onto taste. Many people have said that Loot is in exceedingly bad taste. Are you aware of such a thing as good taste or bad taste?
ORTON: No. You see, the kind of people who always go on about whether a thing is in good taste invariably have very bad taste. I think the English have the worst taste of any people on earth. No, I don’t think there’s such a thing as good taste and bad taste. Some things offend me, but they’re rather odd things. For instance, those translations of Aristophanes by Dudley Fitts. I think they’re extremely bad. They sicken me, but this is just my thing. They obviously don’t offend a lot of people.

Here’s a look at the trailer for Prick Up Your Ears: